NC Defend Healthcare

ACTION ALERT

-- contact House Speaker Joe Hackney about House Bill 901, A BILL THAT PROPOSES THAT WE VOTE to amend the constitution to assert that Health care is a right for all North Carolinians.

This bill is stuck in the rules committee and Joe Hackney has the power to move it into the Policy committee. He might do it if there is public outcry. there are 37 cosponsors and 80 endorsing organizations.. then it would be put on the November 8th ballot.

A state constitutional amendment to vote on would stimulate healthy debate. It is time. There is going to be thinking going on with the viewing of Sicko,
-- there will be plenty of information for people to chew on. It seems like everyone has a family member or friend who is going bankrupt paying their medical bills..

Enter Senators Rand and Jones who introduced a bill that would experiment with privatizing Medicaid in North Carolina:

March 21, 2007

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED

AN ACT TO DIRECT THE Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Medical Assistance, TO ESTABLISH A PILOT MEDICAID HMO PROGRAM.

A Medicaid HMO is a very bad idea.

The state's managed care approach for Medicaid works very well. We have saved millions of dollars and are delivering better services. Community Care Network of NC is a network of 14 non profit agencies the state contracts with to hook Medicaid recipients up with primary care doctors to so the recipients get regular check ups and ongoing care as needed.

Greetings Friends,

There have been a number of stories this week concerning Health Care at the state level. From Massachusetts, we begin to see problems associated with their public/private, forced health insurance plan. The misguided "Health Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured" will begin lobbying the federal government to make "phased" changes to our health care system, starting with the state-based Child Health Insurance Program. A State of the State's report shows how individual states are trying to fix the problem of the uninsured, because the federal government is unwilling to do so.

Fire as Pure Stochastic Patterns

The USA Today gives a nice round-up of the Health Care issues that MIGHT come before the feds. The article reminds me of a comment I read somewhere, the person said that they read the paper shaking their heads saying "We've been talking about that online for weeks." So it is with this story. The focus of this story is the Ron Wyden bill for "universal health care" that will be introduced in January.

Woe is the JLF, for the poor timing of their pitiful attack on Universal Health Care (a.k.a. Health Care for All), or "Welfare" as JLF likes to call it, they planned it for the same week that a brilliant analysis on what we already spend for Health Care in the US comes out. The New York Times has an article describing how much health care is already paid with tax dollars, tax subsidies, and the like. Guess what?

"So government accounts for about two-thirds of health care spending,"

What! Well, that is just outrageous. The government pays for 2/3 of health care in this country, but only covers about 1/3 of the population. Why? Because the insurance industry is supposed to work like this. You insure the entire population. The healthy people pay for the care for the sick. That's why it is "insurance". The private insurance companies, however, have cherry-picked the healthiest individuals for coverage. Thus, they only pay 1/3 of the total cost to cover the "healthy" 2/3 of our society. The rest?

The JLF posts their misguided take on the Health Affairs study that I previously mentioned. Their bias against the uninsured is palpatible and remember...
The uninsured? We used to call them the working class.

The Health Affairs article found that...

We found that 24.7 percent of the uninsured are eligible for public health insurance programs, 55.7 percent are in the “need (financial) assistance” category, and 19.6 percent are likely to be able to afford coverage on their own. There is much variation in this distribution across population groups, with 74 percent of uninsured children being eligible for existing public programs and 57 percent and 69 percent of uninsured parents and childless adults, respectively, being in the “need assistance” category. Consequently, absent a universal coverage solution, a range of policies will be needed to address the problem of uninsurance.

Only a conservative would read those numbers and think that the private system is working well.

An interesting article from Long Beach. Dr. Robert Gumbiner founded FHP in 1961, which went on to become one of the largest HMOs in the country. Remember that once upon a time the argument was that doctors were padding their bills by prescribing tests that were big money makers even when they weren't needed. HMOs were going to save us money by keeping doctors' choices on the up and up. Of course, what we ended up with was a corporation making your medical decisions and penalizing doctors that "waste" money on tests they feel are necessary.

So, perhaps it comes as no surprise that the man who was at the forefront of developing the HMO, now comes out solidly against them. From the Physicians for a National Health Program.

Of course, it's just those lazy welfare mom's that don't have health insurance. It's good for nothing slouches that don't have work, don't look for work. THEY are the people you want to cover with your expensive Universal Health Care, with my taxes.

Bzzzzt. The welfare mom myth. The lazy drag on the economy myth. I've said it before, I'll say it again.

The uninsured? We used to call them the Working Class.

An interesting article from the policy journal Health Affairs. They look at issues relating to Primary Care Physicians in seven countries - notably they leave out the Nordic countries that provide better care through higher taxes. I don't know if I have a point to all of this, but I just wanted to show you some of the differences in quality of care and type of care that we are left with here in the US becauses of our current fragemented system. Quotes and thoughts after the break.

Let's say you're self-employed, maybe running a small company like many of my friends. Maybe running a web-design company, or a you are a free-lance writer, or whatever. Things are going well, you're thinking of maybe expanding, maybe taking "that" vacation with your spouse, maybe being able to send the kids to college. Then, this happens.

Hundreds of actors, artists, musicians and writers in California are facing massive increases in their health insurance premiums, a situation that could face other consumers who don't have employer-sponsored health plans, advocates and lawmakers said.

Cigna Corp., which has sold insurance to members of the entertainment industry through their professional associations for 25 years, is raising premiums for actors and others by an average of 82%, with some hikes as high as 254%.

Under the Cigna increases, premiums on its point-of-service plan will rise to $1,022 a month for single members in the Los Angeles area beginning Jan. 1. Family point-of-service coverage would jump to $2,485 a month.